Saturday, March 26, 2011

Shortbread Strawberries

These cookies were intended as toppers to some strawberry shortcake cupcakes, but then they got faces and took on a life of their own. I had a hard time finding a strawberry shaped cookie cutter and couldn’t possibly wait the few days it would take to order one online, so I squished a spare heart shaped cutter the best I could. Their cute little faces make me smile, hopefully some will last long enough to make it onto cupcakes.

I’m not sure where this recipe came from, it was torn out of a magazine, but it sure makes some tasty cookies. From now on I think I will be making shortbread cookies rather than sugar cookies, I much prefer their soft buttery deliciousness!

The cookies are iced with royal icing and topped with a little fondant flower. For the royal icing I used the same recipe and process I’ve used previously.

To make the icing- add all the ingredients into a medium bowl, beat the ingredients about 7 minutes until smooth. If the icing is too thick add a little more water at a time. (Thin the icing with small amounts of water as needed when flooding the cookies)

Divide the icing in half, colour one half red, divide the remaining half into thirds for the green, pink and white.

Pipe the red strawberry outlines onto the cookies using a fine piping tip. Allow the outlines to set before flooding with icing.

Once the outlines are dry, it is time to flood the cookies with thinned red icing. Use a toothpick to spread the icing and remove any air bubbles.

For the polka dots, drop small dots of white flooding icing into the red icing while still wet.

let the strawberries dry completely, pipe on the green leafy bit and pink rosy cheeks. Stick on a little fondant flower to each strawberry while the icing is still wet.

Once all the icing has set draw on the happy faces and stitched outline with a food pen or food colour.

These cookies are utterly amazing. So perfect with their rosy cheeks and cute smiles! I have tried and failed in the cookie decorating department, but I think its because I lack patience, it was great seeing your step by step photos of how you do it.